Recently, IRE ran ads on and . Both are online comics sites aimed at gamers. We did a campaign on 8-bit theatre a couple years ago and it went quite well. This time, however, it did only 'ok' while the Gucomics ads did horribly. There could be many reasons for this: Perhaps the ads sucked, perhaps the demographic of the sites has changed such that the audience will no longer give text the time of day, etc. I don't really have an answer there.

It's gotten me thinking about the need to continually try to bring people into text MUDs who don't play them or who aren't even aware they exist. Unfortunately, no one in Iron Realms is really a marketer. I handle all our marketing but I'm certainly no expert. I don't have existing relationships with sites, much less paper publications, we don't have a dedicated person to produce creatives (ads) and I don't really spend the time on it that I should.

So, we're going to look for outside help. Yesterday, at the at Stanford, I met with the to talk about promoting our games outside the standard text mud sites. During the conversation, I had the idea that perhaps what we need to do is promote the entire realm of text MUDs rather than specific games. Or rather, promote the entire realm of text MUDs along with specific text MUDs. A rising tide raises all ships and all that.

I don't have any firm arrangement in mind so this is all subject to coming to an agreement suitable to all parties, but is there any interest out there in some sort of joint marketing program aimed at people who do not currently play text MUDs? Practically speaking, I don't see it working without contributions of some sort (probably financial) from all participants, but I'm open to suggestions.

Roughly, and with the caveat that since we're hiring outside marketing experts they would have a much better idea of the best way to go about this than I do, I'm imagining creating some sort of web page or web site that would break down participating text MUDs into various categories (hack n' slash, PvP, roleplaying, whatever) as well as provide some information on text MUDs aimed at people who have no idea what a text MUD is and they text MUDs rock. We'd give the 'alliance' some sort of name and then advertise that alliance, with ads leading people to that page.

So, thoughts from those in a position to participate?

--matt

I'd be game for that. I think if we're finding a way to raise public awareness of the text gaming genre as a whole, we'd go a long way toward bringing new blood into the mix. I've tried doing this during radio interviews in Orlando and newspaper interviews in Tampa, but it would be best if we could find some way to concentrate the effort. Ideally, we should do what we can to tell people what text games offer and then point them to the big clearinghouses like TMS and TMC.

Count me in! After exams are over (mid-December or so), I'd even be happy to develop any PHP scripting for the site we need. Can't do graphic design worth a ####, so somebody else would need to draw up the template PSDs, but I can come up with just about any sort of functionality that would be needed for the site (mud listing database, automated submission process, account registration, banner rotation, ad nauseum).

Sounds like a good plan.

We would sure like to be part of something like that, although our financial situation might not be the best, some contributions maybe could be helpful.

I've always thought that selling MUDs as 'interactive novels' was probably the way to go (or you might try "chat rooms with story") to appeal to the general public.

Hmm, was that the sound of everyone throwing things at me?

I think the easiest market to capture would be D&D and card based games. Contacting Wizards of the Coast and the like to add advertising to their stuff would be quite fun. Also magazines like Scrye and such would draw an interesting group of people.

It's a noble effort, but let's face it. It's an uphill battle. We don't have hot elf chicks with their crotch in your face (played by 40 year old truckdrivers) like Everquest does. We don't have 3d shooting engines like counterstrike, etc. The closest there is to realtime strategy is ASSAULT, and that's just one game (which has lots of other issues, like color that makes you puke and an admin who throws temper tantrums). And even that, can't compete with (say) age of mythologies or "command and conquer 46534: because we need sequels to make money". Kavir's GWII project sounds interesting, but the learning curve is so steep it won't attract a single soul outside the mud community.

What we need to do is integrate MUD with MMORPG. Set a game up so that you can connect via telnet, from work or from a public comp or *whatever*, and play fine, OR can connect using a special client (a la MMORPG) and get full graphics, etc. The key is to have both be the same game, ie, the person with graphics doesnt magically have special abilities the person with telnet lacks. People on telnet and on the client would interact seemlessly.

But that's a lot more work than most you mouthbreathing monkeys can do-- it's largely the fault of baboons taking existing codebases, screwing up the colors to all #### and calling it "A new codebase!!!!!! The uttermost epitome of mudding!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GRBLARGH!!" that we all have such a bad name. But then, it's also partly due to the fact that we haven't evolved from dark age technologies.

Er...some of us would argue that text isn't precisely "dark age technology," but rather a taste that appeals to a certain segment of the population that doesn't rely on eye candy all the time. And that's the segment, I believe, we'd be pursuing with this effort.

Well Brody,

Mudding is not casual gaming. The learning curve is steep as heck and on most big muds, to get anywhere you have to devote TREMENDOUS amounts of time-- so much time that if it were invested otherwise it would yield college degrees, published novels, etc. One advantage most muds have is the fact they're free, but they more than destroy this advantage since by choosing to mud, one is basically giving up a 2nd full-time job.
So what am I getting at? We won't do well targeting casual gamers, and that leaves only elite gamers. Sadly, elite gamers are the kind who are WILLING to pay the $20/month for hot elfchick-truckdriver poontang on Everquest. Elitist gamers who specialize in text are VERY few and far between. You've got us mudders... then you've got the roguelikes, and they have a good sized following, but they are getting fresh blood no faster than we ourselves are. The one "fortress" of text gamers is, as someone mentioned above, the utopia-type games. See eg. legend of the green dragon. These games are successful precisely because of their strict limits to turns- if everyone has only 20 turns per RL day, suddenly the "sacrifice social life, sleep, work, food and sex" aspect disappears and you can be quite successful playing for an hour or less a day. Perhaps it would be neat to experiment with setups like this in MUDs.
But another advantage the eutopia/LotGD games have is, again, they've evolved beyond dark ages. Once upon a time, the internet was only accessed through college computer labs and everyone did everything with Telnet, Gopher, or Lynx. Not any more. I'm not saying I agree, I loved those days, but it's over man. The fat lady has sung. That's not to despair though- there's no reason we can't have muds running on http servers. But everyone follows tradition like brainless zombies and churns out identical copies of muds that've been around forever.

Heh. So, putting this thread back on track ... erdos won't be joining the effort, I take it.

Huh, the idea sounds intensely interesting, and I would be more than willing to join in the effort. I just happen to have no technical experitise (or experience) in ANY field that may be involved with this project. I am poor, am only currently a green self-taught learner in the programming field, have no idea how to approach web functionality in the least, and I have no coordination when it comes to colors, designs, and marketing techniques.

I can babble alot, though. XD

In reply to erbos's commentary about targetting 'elitist' gamers--he's only half right. But you forget the couple thousand current-MUDers who are supremely stingy or broke, but have the time on their hands because either they're slackers, have a short school day, have no social life, or they're not monitored at work, or whatever. And there are plenty of people (I should know) who just get online and sit there day in and day out roaming over those lame web-based game sites wondering if there was ever "something more."

Re: The idea that MUDs are in trouble because they need to target dedicated gamers who are willing to pay $20 for the likes of Everquest.

I believe that a large number of MUDs can easily target as an audience the kind of gamer who tried MMORPGs and even played one seriously for a while, but gave up on them due to some digruntlement. Depending on what the specific issue of disgruntlement was, different MUDs would fill that void.

For example, there isn't such a thing as a MMORPG where the RP level isn't in the toilet. A RP-required MUD can steal some audience there among players who are looking for RP. ####, even a RP optional MUD probably can do the same thing there. There hasn't yet been (my opinion) a fantasy MMORPG where the PvP side of the game didn't absolutely suck. A solid PK MUD can possibly pick up audience there among people who look to be on top of a game by skill and competition rather than super-catassing.

You get the idea.

MUDs can appeal to some subset of players of other games by working other angles. I'm too tired at the moment to elaborate, but the possibilities are there.

Sorry about my lack of participation in the thread so far. Yesterday was busy work day and today, of course, Halo 2 is released, so I shan't be doing anything but playing it with friends.
--matt

I would definitely be interested. I think that if we get past all this negativity - we could possibly get many new players into the market. Let's face it - people do things for strange reasons sometimes. If all of us could always accurately predict why people responded to what they do ... we'd all be billionaires.

I remember very vividly what made me first come in contact with Muds. It was a light article in a magazine, not a Game Magazine or even an internet one, I believe it was a litterary magazine actually.

It described, in a rather humorous way, the nature of a Mud, how the world was set up, and the interaction between the players. It also said that MUDs were usually a game for the introverts, people who'd rather read a good book than go to the pub. And it mentioned how addictive it was, how a kind of virtual society developed in a mud, and how students were known to have blown their exams by mudding to much.

I remember how intrigued I was by the article, it made me want to look for myself, and since it gave the URL address to the Mudconnector, I  checked it out, connected to the first Mud on their list that let me in - and that was it. Pretty soon I was hooked well and good, and it didn't even matter that the mud was pretty much stock, it was my first mud and I loved it.

What I wanted to say with this rant is, that a couple of articles like that in a number of magazines probably would be a lot more effective than any advertizing campaign with banners and stuff, and it would also reach totally new audiences, of the kind that we all want - namely people who like to read.

I would never have even noticed a banner or an ad myself, furthermore I simply loathe aggressive advertising like popups and spam mail, and I think a lot of people react in the same way.

The main problem would of course not be to write the articles, I could even do that myself. The hard thing would be to persuade the right magazine to publish them, or to get some professional journalist interested enough to write about it. But I definitely think it would be possible, after all it IS an interesting phenomenon that Muds have survived for so many years, and still get developed, even with all the competition from video games and graphical muds around nowadays. It shows that good old text still holds its territory.

While I think this idea has potential, I'd warn the participants against promoting the mud community as if muds were a commodity.  Avoid promotions similar to "Beef, it's what's for dinner," etc.

Erdos makes a relevant point in that newcomers simply aren't going to be impressed by many of the qualities that muds hold in common. Rather, it is the diversity of content (or at least the potential for diversity) that is the biggest benefit of the community as a whole.  And that might best be exploited by promoting specific subset of muds to targetted audiences, rather than promoting mudding in general.

Good luck with it, Jaz. I'll see if I can't do something similar in my neck of the woods. I've tried pitching the article idea to the local alternative paper's reporters before - and had them nibbling (but not quite biting). Maybe if I write something up as a column. Hrmhrm. We'll see!

I think what should be emphasized as a special quality for all Muds is the sense of community. This has nothing to do with whether the Mud is RP or not, it's just the feeling of being a part of a group that you know well. I would elaborate on it, but I am not quite awake, and I think you all know what I am referring to anyhow.

Most players have this community feeling in the mud they think of as their 'Home Mud'. Heck, that's why they even call it their home mud.

Witness a craggy peak, its granite spires reaching through a blanket of thick roiling fog and stretching into a fire-lit midnight sky. Flashes of lightning torment the darkness, their forks as brilliant as the stream of sparks from a forge. The silhouette of a massive form in flight blackens the tops of the clouds and threatens the churning sea surface far below.  

What do you see when the fog parts as a gust of bitter northern wind pushes it against the knife-sharp cliffs, curling the steely haze away to reveal a tiny spiral of flickering torchlight clinging to the face of the stone.

What do you see? What do you sense; what do you feel within your bones as you watch the torches spiral skyward in their perilous cling to the hair's width of path upon the spire's face?

Does your spine shiver with a thrill of fear at the sudden clatter of gravel across the path, dislodged from above by a careless foot?
Does your mind's eye wince as a blast of icy air grips the hem of your robe and yanks it toward the inky ravine a mere toe's width away?
Do you hear the thin scream of a fellow traveler as he loses his footing, leather soles scrabbling in futile scampers for a long heart-stopping second before he plummets away into the gaping darkness?

What do you see? Would you venture onward? Could you venture onward? Could you break the icy grip of fear upon your throat and follow your companions upward into certain danger?

If so, welcome to the vast universe of the MUD, where your mind collaborates with the MUD's written word to create the most powerful game of all.

: : : : :
There... just one approach to demonstrate to the reader how far into an environment he can take himself.  The person who gains something from a portrayed visual like the described cliff is the person who will 'get it.'  I'm sure better writers than I can come up with better portrayals.

MUDs will die out as a genre when books die out, when the human eye ceases to read and the human mind ceases to imagine.  We provide a service to the gaming community: We empower and embody literacy and the intense potential of the written word, not as a highlight or a book in a dusty library of a graphics game, but as a constant.

A picture may be worth a thousand words to some, but MUDs prove every day that the written word paints that picture, with nuance and detail beyond the brush and camera's power. Count me in - count Legends of Karinth in - put us on the bandwagon as it rolls out to the rest of the world.

The_logos  Nov. 10 2004,17:12
Perhaps the fact that English is not my first language makes me miss something here.

But what it looks like is, that he wants a number of you to contribute financially to his own ad, and in return you'd get 'a little section '  with a link in a corner somewhere.

Doesn't look like a good deal to me.

I will chalk this up to ignorance of English colloquial usage. Perhaps the meaning of "footing the bill" doesn't translate well. It means "paying for it."

--matt

Sheesh Molly. *shakes head*

The saying is true: no good deed goes unpunished.

I'm interested and look forward to discussing it with you further. I wonder how many people are interested to the point of being able to invest real money in the venture?

Also Molly, he said "IF" we are footing the bill. This means - IF Iron Realms ends up being the sole sponsor of this project, THEN they will be the primary game advertised.

Think of it as a C-code statement.

IF A = 100%;

PRINT "Visit our game first, but there are some others you can find here: (http..blahblah website for the group..blah blah).";

ELSEIF

something else;

ENDIF;

return 0;


and yeah my C is rusty. Sue me.

I interpreted 'footing the bill' as 'paying the major part of the bill'. It seemed natural, since the thread after all is about a 'joint venture'.

and yeah my English is rusty. Sue me.

Sorry about the semantics, like I pointed out, English isn't my first language.

You might want to hold back on the flamethrower then.

This makes for a poor excuse when used repeatedly- especially when the same people seem to be the targets of your vitriol. It starts to look like a convenient way to dodge blame when/if your flame is not well received.

Well... moving slightly back on-topic here...

I probably speak for most non-commercial MU* owners when I say that I'd be happy to help, but that $15k is obviously help on a scale that would not be very plausible for me.

Likely all I could commit to on my budget at present is $500 or so at most - the majority of the help I could offer here would primarily be technical, I think, since I'm relatively so limited in a financial sense (ah, the student life).

Anyway, as I said before, it sounds like a great idea, and I'd be happy to help as I can. Just drop me a line if/when you get this thing sketched out and let me know what I can do.

Yeah, this is going to take some time to work out in terms of what the arrangements would be. I totally understand that MUDs being run as hobbys are not likely to have owners willing to contribute a lot (or any) money. The trick here is that I really do want to show the outside gaming world that text MUDs generally can offer a lot of great things, but I don't want to do it enough to essentially pay a lot to promote other people's MUDs. Lemme work this through in my mind some more and talk to some more people.

--matt

Someone might have brought this up in the previous pages, but I think the term "MUD" itself needs to go.

Mud is dirt and water. Hardly exciting. You could play WoW or you could play MuD. Hmmm...

Something I haven't seen in this thread yet, which I think is something everyone either can or has thought of, is maybe a bit of statistical work. I'm not a marketing professional or even a student of one, but economics and marketing usually go hand in hand, and a lot of it is comprised of good old logic and common sense.
Statistically, we need to find out what our current audience is; who plays these games already? Then find out where they are and what the best way to contact them.
Without a real statistical study, my initial guess (from the years I've played and seeing who else is playing, granted on small "local" muds only) would be that the large majority of players are students, mostly collage age students, but with a good dose of high-school students (I think we can chauck up a large percentage of the "problem players" to being high-schoolers).
IF that non-scientific observation is true, then it's reasonable to assume that most of the players that any campaign would target, would be more students. So, it would be best to target them directly.
So, IF the students are the best people to target, then I'm not sure newspaper ads are your best means of communication. As mentioned previously by Matt I believe, online advertising *does* work, but unmentioned is you need to find the right places online. His techTV add worked as he mentioned, but I think probably because it tends to be targeted at younger inquisitive minds.
So, we need to find locations that students frequent in order to maximize our return on that target audience, which is our maxium usage group. So find the locations they frequent the most. Most students end up living/learning/playing at Universities scattered around the county. Fairly cheap flier campaigns at your local University (check the University rules before going at it though) probably can be fairly effective. Again, the majority of mudders may very well be students, so if each posts at their university of choice, we've covered a lot of ground.

There's a lot of assumptions in here, I know. That's why it calls for a fairly decent statistical investigation. I get the impression that most of the people that frequent this board, and even TMC arn't these common-student-players, but instead are more along the lines of the administrative folk, which tend to be post-student hard core gamers that play/run muds as a sideline hobby, and then the few minority that run it as their full time job. So doing a survay on the boards won't tell you much. Doing them on our individual MUDs can. Once we find out who the current target % is, we can start marketing to their peers. Once we've covered that ground, start on the next highest minority group, or start to explore (a more risky venture I think any good marketer will tell you) those that we can't difinitivly say are a good target group, but one we *think* could be. The most obvious here are "gammers" (of all ages) that might not know about MUDs. That in itself will take a larger more expensive statistical campaign to find those more... financially dangerous target groups; ones we arn't too sure of. Then probably another campaign to find out how sure we can be of them.

I applogize for the length.. I tend not to write in short  bursts, but try to explore all aspects that I can at the time.

Note: the "gammer" targeting audience might not yield as much as one might expect. Many of these people have heard/tried MUDs, but are just frankly not interested, since they either don't like to have to work off a computer, or don't like the restricted world they find themselves in (table top is *much* more flexible in terms of what can be done, and always will be until we can interface direectly with human brains. Yes, there are some things a MUD can do that table top games can't--in depth player kill for example--and that in-itself should be a marketing ploy; find the differences and exploit the benifits that can't be executed in table top games.

Note 2: I've made a lot of generalities. I know I have. These are not definitive facts or professional survays. They're "guesses" as to what the outcome might be like, and guesses that disreguard a lot of possibilities. But that's why you do survaying; to generalize the playing field *properly*.

Hi. Haven't forgotten about this, incidentally. Just looking around at various marketing options. Say, could those of you who were interested email me at:

matt (-at-) ironrealms (-dot-) com?

Thanks!
--matt

I think there are three main target audiences for text-based games that are quite large:

1) Fantasy and science-fiction fans/readers/moviegoers
2) Players of traditional "offline" RPGs (AD&D etc.)
3) Existing online gamers (MUD, MMORPG or otherwise)

A large segment of (at least) the first category may be virtually untapped.  And this base is growing all the time with the massive successes that movie series like Lord of the Rings or the Matrix have brought to the general public.  Let's face it:  people who find it interesting to watch a movie or read a book on the theme would probably like to experience "being in" such a world, as it were.  Many of these people are unaware of text-based games or even RPGs in general, and that is perhaps where marketing efforts would be most successful.

I'm willing to contribute my research/design/marketing skills (such as they are) to a group effort.  I don't think this would take a whole lot of money, but perhaps a lot of time from the people willing to promote it (as with MUDs themselves).

-Aloysius
Dark Tower

I've just finished speaking to a couple of marketing firms about text promotion and unfortunately, doing this as a group effort doesn't seem like it'll work, at least as regards our involvement with said marketing firm.

However, that doesn't mean we can't try to work together in more guerilla ways to promote text. The group of us that pledged to Child's Play is the first act in that direction, I think. Other opportunities will crop up I'm sure.

In any case, thanks for all the interest in this on the forum and via emails but pooling our money together to advertise text generally is probably not the way to go for now.

--matt

Figures.

Can’t say the outcome of this surprises me, I never really could picture the_logos as someone who gives a hoot about the mudding community in general.
To those of you that could, all I can say is:

Oops! He did it again…

Another of his little publicity stunt successfully accomplished.

Some of you must have really short memories. As for me, I clearly recall that thread where he urged everybody on the list to chip in with some cash, so he could sue Medievia for breaking the Diku licence.

Of course that was just before that other thread where he urged everybody on the list to go ahead and break the Diku licence, since according to the gospel of st_logos the wording of the licence wouldn’t stand up in a lawsuit, and to #### with the intent of it.

This guy is obviously interested in one thing only: To get as much space and promotion as possible for his own games. The rest of the mud community is just means to that end to him.

Sinuhe, that's all well-known to the older posters of the board.

I'd say a good chunk of the older posters just consider him a troll at this point, and handle him as such.

Just a piece of advice there, at least. Handle Achaea as a troll, and he becomes a lot easier to stomach.

*gasp* Oh my god! I'm so evil for deciding that I'm not going to essentially single-handedly fund promotion of other muds as given the amounts of money involved, that's what it would have involved.

*gasp* I'm so evil for tossing an idea around that turned out not to be workable.

I guess the contributions you and Dulan have made to the MUDs can't be argued with though. Paragons of hope for MUDs, the two of you are. I have little doubt that soon all the world will know of the beauty of text MUDs due to your ceaseless efforts to expand the appeal of text. Way to go guys!

--matt

On a more serious note, the only people that have any right to complain are the people who pledged to help, like Traithe (Shadows of Isildur), Threshold, Sanvean (Armaggedon), Lanthum, and a few others. However, there is a strong correlation between being willing to engage in a cooperative effort and maintaining an adult attitude about it. I'm willing to bet none of the people who voluntereed to help are going to be flaming me for just seeing if it was feasible or not, because the people who did want to help are, to a man/woman, intelligent, reasonable, and mature.

Funny how neither of you two flamers were among those offering to help, even in non-financial ways.

--matt

Making a statement of fact a troll doth make, eh Achaea?

No. Taking any excuse to flame doth a troll make.

Harde, if you really think that was flaming...

Oy vey. Now, a flame would involve actually attacking someone rather then making an offhand statement that is factually correct.

If I called you a "sorry sack of sh!t", that would be a flame. Saying that "Hey, some people think you troll!" is not.

The former is -attacking- someone, while the latter isn't. Comprende?

It should also be noted that the_logos is the one who took the time to coordinate the partnerships between several games and game-related companies (not just his own) and the Child's Play charity.

I'm also pleased to report that I've seen a bit of traffic coming my way thanks to the time he took to involve me and set up our presence on the charity's website.

Even if we don't end up doing a full-blown marketing effort, projects like this are a huge help.

Everyone with more than half a brain thinks you're an idiot who has never actually done anything of worth in MUDs, preferring instead to spend what little creative energy you apparently possess flaming and trolling on various MUD-related boards.

Not a flame, apparently. Interesting. I didn't realize that simply adding "Other people think" or some equivalent on the front of a flame changes it into not a flame. Sure seems juvenile to me, but then, I clearly don't possess your level of general sophistication so maybe I'm just missing something as I wallow around in a morass of my own ignorance and stupidity.

--matt

Hopefully you'll see more too after I put out a press release about the 6 text MUD companies donating to Child's Play. I'll do it next week after people are back from Thanksgiving.

--matt

See, Harde?

-That's- a flame.

Yes, of course. It's a flame when I do it. It's not a flame when you do it. My mistake, sorry.

What I wrote.

Now we can argue this all day, Achaea, but that's not really a flame. Maybe a bit of a poke, but as I said - So long as people handle you like a troll and don't take stuff you say insultingly/personally, they'll be able to stomach ya fine, bud.

Using charities for with the little bald kids suffering from cancer and crippled kids with as a vehicle for mud promotion is a pretty darn slick idea.  

More hits.  More players.  More traffic.  More promotion.

That's what charity is all about.  It's all about you.

God bless you worthless bastards.   :-)